As we take our virgin steps into space, there is one thing that could always put a cap on our ambitions. Despite
our desire to explore the stars, we are limited by travelling at less
than light speed - and even if we managed to match that pace, we would
still be listing our voyages from star to star in years, centuries or
millenia. But, in what
could be a huge breakthrough, theorists from Nasa say there is 'hope'
that we can achieve faster-than-light travel, after physicists found a
theoretical possibility for warp speed travel.

Space time mapped out: Teams at NASA are
exploring ways to warp the universe to enable faster than light travel.
Pictured is a model of how a ship, enclosed in a space-time 'doughnut',
could reach the stars

While nothing can break the
speed of light, scientists have long considered the fantasy of warp
speed travel, where spaceships could bend space and time on itself to
move through loopholes in space. Equations
based on the laws of relativity have allowed warp speed in theory: but
the energy required to make it happen would require the energy-mass of a
Jupiter-sized planet.

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Mexican physicist Miguel
Alcubierre's theories are the most practical, mooting a ring around a
sphere-shaped spaceship, which would contract space in front of the
ship, and expand space behind it. This would allow faster-than-light travel - if astrophysicists could harness planet-sized energy or sip power from a supernova.

The 100 year star ship symposium is
investigating various means by which we can travel to the stars, hoping
to find a happy medium between practical and far-fetched methods

But according to Space.com, Harold 'Sonny'
White, from NASA's Johnson Space Center, told the 100 Year Starship
Symposium, a gathering of scientists, writers and philosophers in
Houston, that new theories could allow Man to reach such speeds with
less energy. He told his
audience that, instead of enclosing a space-ship in a space time-bubble,
a craft could sit within a 'doughnut' shape - which means the warp
drive could be powered by a mass the size of a spacecraft like the
Voyager 1 probe - the equivalent size of a small car. He told Space.com: ''The findings I presented today change it from impractical to plausible and worth further investigation. 'The
additional energy reduction realized by oscillating the bubble
intensity is an interesting conjecture that we will enjoy looking at in
the lab.' White and his team
are experimenting with a mini-version of a warp drive in their
laboratory, using laser to try to warp space and time in miniature. He
said his 'humble experiment' was 'trying to see if we can generate a
very tiny instance of this in a tabletop experiment, to try to perturb
space-time by one part in 10 million.'